This paper studies the suitability of using a meta-heuristic ant colony technique in routing multimedia content over wireless sensor networks. The presented technique is both energy and QoS-aware. Ant colony algorithm is used to find the optimal routing path. Optimality is in the sense of minimizing energy consumption and increasing link quality and reliability. The proposed approach results in minimizing energy consumption and prolonging the lifetime of the network. Moreover, the optimal path has a high link quality and reliability which enhances video frame quality and ensures high probability of successful delivery of video frames. The importance given to energy consumption, link quality, and link reliability metrics can be varied depending on the multimedia application requirements.

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